


A Bargain for Knowledge

by rei_c



Series: Knowledge 'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Older Characters, Politics, Voodoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2020-09-02 06:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20271712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: The boy has the potential to be the nextpoto mitanbut first he'll need to undergo the judgment of thememeres.





	A Bargain for Knowledge

They meet at night, under the watchful eye of a waning crescent moon. Out back of the meeting house there's a circle of seven chairs around a fire pit; one of the Lagarousse clan set up the fire earlier and now it smells of citronella and ash, the flames dancing in the sluggish breeze coming off the river and bayous. In front of each chair there's a small table, the surface taken up with bottles of water and flowerpots, a different flower in each. 

Balance, in all things: this is their mantra and the root of their laws. This is what was brought from Haiti, generations ago, with their loa, with their _konesans_ and their _asogwes_, with their _houngons_ and their _mambos_. Balance, in all things.

Mélanie, the youngest, is the first to arrive. She pokes the fire, throws on another log and some smaller branches before surveying the flowers on the tables. Her eyes dance over the ivy, the amaryllis, the aloe, the phlox, movement of her pupils pausing on the lobelia and cypress. Mélanie shakes her head and walks towards the white lilacs, sitting in the chair behind them. She stretches her feet out underneath the table, closes her eyes as her hips pop and her knees ache. The fire helps, but only a little; the waves of heat mix with the humidity still clinging to the earth, even now, just before midnight, and sink in, loosening her muscles. 

It's not long before she hears footsteps, two pairs, one helping the other. She waits to open her eyes until the sounds pause, then looks and sees Variola helping Dadou stand as they both take in the flowers. 

Dadou snorts when she sees the amaryllis, says, "That'll be me, then, heya? Pride. Like I would'a missed a meeting, no matter where or when." 

Variola's smile is badly hidden but she doesn't say anything as she makes sure Dadou is settled before going over to the chair next to Mélanie, sitting down in front of the ivy with a grateful noise, bitten back. 

Somehow, in the noise and show of Variola and Dadou's arrive, Mélanie missed Laurette, who's sitting behind the cypress. She must have ghosted in, silently taken in the choice of flowers, and picked her seat, all in the span of seconds. 

Not for the first time, Mélanie finds herself a little bit awed by Laurette, who sees her watching and tilts her head in Mélanie's direction. 

"The girl chose wisely, I think," Laurette says. She hardly ever speaks, usually only whispers in the ears of those sitting beside her, and it makes sense that cypress would be sandwiched between phlox and aloe.

"The girl needs t' stop getting ideas above her station," Fredeline snaps, as she follows Chanté into the circle. Fredeline sits down, filling the space between Dadou and Variola, her posture stiff and unyielding even as the lobelia in front of her moves, the smallest bit, with the breeze.

Dadou snorts, says, "The girl'll be taking the place o' one o' us, someday. Better she know how to read the earth and the winds a'fore she sits in the circle." 

While Dadou speaks, Chanté claims the phlox-space. Mélanie doesn't know much about Chanté, even though Chanté's the public voice of their circle with her education and the ability to hide her thoughts, her beliefs, behind her dark eyes. She's a mystery, locked up tight, and Mélanie hasn't had time to find the key. It unnerves her, always has, and tonight is no different.

"We all know you're unhappy with this situation, Freddie," Chanté says. "But please, don't take it out on the girl and for Bondye's sake, give the rest of us a chance to make up our minds." 

Fredeline glares at Chanté, says, "If y'all's minds ain't already made up, then y'all should be ashamed of y'selves. It ain't that hard to decide 'gainst madness." 

"Freddie-girl, you shut the hell up for a minute," Dadou says. "Some of us are too old to start arguing right away and Marie-Celeste ain't even here yet. And before you say nothing, no, I ain't decided which way I feel 'bout this, because if I had, I would'a sent a message with Amiot and saved my poor bones the trouble."

Mélanie avoids Fredeline's gaze and looks down at the lilacs in front of her instead. It's no surprise that Fredeline's already made up her mind; the old goat has an opinion about everything. 

Thankfully Mélanie doesn't have to worry about Fredeline's glare for very long before Marie-Celeste arrives, the last to hobble into the circle, feet shuffling and cane hitting the dirt. The old crone completes and closes the circle, rootwork singing into place with an audible bass _boom_ that Mélanie feels in the way her heart stutters; she wonders how the older ones handle that feeling, every time. 

Marie-Celeste sits with a sigh and props the cane against the table. "I come from Sylvain's," she says. "The boy sleeps, and his loa with him."

"If he's who he says he is," Dadou begins to say. She stops when she sees Marie-Celeste shake her head. 

"The witch put 'im to sleep," Marie-Celeste says. "He might as well be dead to the world tonight. And with him quiet, there ain't no way his loa's gonna be sticking 'round here." Fredeline mutters something under her breath before subsiding under a raised eyebrow from Marie-Celeste. "Well," Marie-Celeste says. "We might as well git started. Sooner we finish this, sooner we can go to bed. I know Fred's chomping at the bit to speak her piece, but mebbe." Marie-Celeste trails off, glancing around the circle. "Mebbe Chanté? You wanna remind us all o' what the boy wants?" 

Chanté sits up in her chair, takes a sip from one of the water bottles before speaking. "Samuel Winchester came down here with Melissande Duval, a _mambo_ from Ascension parish, and two others from our San Francisco territory, Théo Auclair and Marie Madoult. They claim he survived an out-of-ritual mounting by nine loa on his first meeting with the San Francisco group -- no vévés drawn to summon them and nothing to protect him. They claim he's been true-ridden by Marinette, Baron Samedi, and Legba Atibon since, among others. They claim he's got the power of a _houngon_, at the very least, enough to lead a territory. They claim that he could be _poto mitan_." She pauses, adds, softer, slower, "They also claim that he has no base of power and that he is his own base of power. They came here to petition us to unravel his power and place it in amongst ours."

Fredeline opens her mouth but Marie-Celeste holds up a hand as Laurette leans over and starts whispering to her. When Laurette is done, Marie-Celeste says, "'Rette wants to know if we got any proof. Mélanie, your clan reads power better than any o' the rest of us. How much power does the boy have?" 

"Lots," she says, resisting the urge to flinch under Fredeline's glare. "They're right: he has the power to be a _houngon_. A territory leader, probably, depending on the loa he picks and how much energy that'll require."

"But _poto mitan_?" Dadou asks. "The most sacred?"

Mélanie holds out her hands. "Until we touch his power, we can't know for sure. We've been careful to dance around it in case he can tell."

Fredeline snorts. When Mélanie turns to look at her, along with the others, she's shaking her head. "There ain't no way an _outsider_ could ever possibly be _poto mitan_. We've been breedin' it into the families for centuries. The last six were all from families who could trace their lineage directly back to Jeanne Toussaint. I ain't believing y'all're _actually_ considering this, that a _white boy_ from outside the faith could be what we been looking for." 

"I talked to him," Dadou says. "Oh, don't gimme that look, Marie-Celeste, I know you told us not to but of course I did it anyway. There's a reason the girl picked the amaryllis for me." Marie-Celeste waves her hand, an unspoken capitulation. Dadou beams, says, "I talked to the boy. I asked him where the power came from." Her smile drops, slowly. "He said that his family were, were visited by a demon when he turned six months old. The demon bled in his mouth and his mother was sacrificed. She was pinned to the ceiling and died in a blaze of fire. He don't know why but before he met our brothers and sisters in San Francisco, he heard voices. He saw things, had dreams. They led him to us. He thinks mebbe the demon opened his mind for some reason and that the loa filled it."

"Nonsense," Fredeline says, and Mélanie hears the tremour in Fredeline's voice. "There ain't no way -- he ain't -- _demon-bound_. Any power he has is demon-touched. There ain't no way he's one of ours. This should prove it." 

Laurette leans over to Variola, this time, and whispers for a long handful of minutes, minutes that give everyone a chance to take in that new information. The boy demon-touched, the mother dead. 

Marie-Celeste asks Mélanie, "Did his power taste demonic?" 

Mélanie shakes her head. "No," she says. "Nothing about him felt like demons. Not from the edges, anyway. Maybe if we unwound it, we'd feel it. I don't know."

"Laurette says that she heard from Melissande Duval, the _mambo_," Variola says. "Melissande talked at her plenty this afternoon. The boy's been seeing her off an' on for a year, weeks at a stretch. She taught him French, taught him hoodoo, took him to Haiti." There's a murmur at that and Mélanie's interested, shifts in her chair and watches Laurette and Variola in turns. "She said that our cousins there believe him. So Laurette had Simone call Alexandrine Péralte. Alexandrine says he got the power to be _poto mitan_ and that as the _poto mitan_, no city will be enough to hold him. He needs to create a base of power and Alexandrine says that if we refuse to recognise him, Melissande will take him down to Haiti and he'll stay there. They're willing and ready to claim him. They'll teach him and, when he's ready, they'll unbind his power and spread it all across the island."

"Who," Marie-Celeste asks, carefully, as everyone else has gone silent with the threat, the promise, "did Alexandrine swear on?" 

Variola looks at Laurette, who lifts her chin and says, voice shaking, "On her ancestors, on Jeanne Toussaint, on Damballah and Bondye and _le gran met_, her hand to the heavens." 

Despite the heat, Mélanie's blood cools to ice with those words and turns sluggish in her veins. For the leader of the Haitian vodouisantes, the leader of them _all_ in the absence of a _poto mitan_, to swear like that, well. Alexandrine is serious. There's no way they can ignore her words or her proclamation. 

"I think we take it on faith, then, that the boy's power belongs t' us," Marie-Celeste says into the quiet. "And that he is our next _poto mitan_. So, sisters. Do we let him hold Plaquemines with us, or do we send him t' Haiti?" 

Mélanie wants to snarl, to say that the boy belongs to _them_, that _they_ will take him in, will give him knowledge and succor and everything he needs, but she knows herself and her gifts enough to know it's not her speaking; she grits her teeth and stays silent. 

"We need to know who he'll choose as his first," Chanté says. "If it's Ogou, we'll have to plant him in New Orleans, not down here in the bayous with us."

"If Alexandrine said that a city ain't gonna be 'nough to hold him," Variola says, "I'd be inclined to believe her. Whether it's Ogou or not, he'll need more than a city. She would give him an island. Think about that, sister. She thinks he has enough power for an _island_ and not just any island, but _our_ island. Alexandrine would give him _Haiti_. If we kept him, it would _have_ to be a parish, and it'd be thick, too. The first _poto mitan_ in this country planted herself here, where we live. That's why we stay here, after all. No," Variola says, shaking her head, "Marie-Celeste is right: it's Haiti or it's Plaquemines." 

Dadou shrugs, says, "If it's here, we can keep an eye on him. Keep an eye on his power." 

"But if it's here," Chanté points out, "and if we unravel enough of it, he could overpower _us_."

That has them all sitting back in their chairs. The idea that anyone could be strong enough to overpower the generations of sister-circles who have kept Plaquemines would be ludicrous, Mélanie thinks, if it wasn't for Alexandrine's promises. If the boy has enough power to cover Haiti, he'd have enough to cover Plaquemines ten times over. Even if that doesn't overpower their circle entirely, it would be enough to change the taste of the parish. It would definitely have an effect on their workings. 

"Chanté had a point earlier," Fredeline says. "We need t' know who he's gonna be choosin' as his first. If he's as close to the bitch loa as Marie's told Garcelle, do we really want pieces of that strung out 'round our holdings? No. We don't. I don't. Better to send him away, even if it is to Haiti. Bondye knows that loa likes it down there."

Variola tilts her hand from side to side. "She loves him, though; that's what Marie said. If she got someone to love, mebbe she won't go crazy." 

Marie-Celeste sighs. "Mebbe," she agrees. "Mebbe not. With her, ain't nothing easy. Ain't nothing ever sure. Mélanie? What you feel when you touched his power?"

"They're close," Mélanie says, instantly. She's sensitive, the most sensitive their family's ever produced, and the way the boy and the loa were curled up earlier, twined in each other like lovers, thoughts blending seamlessly, two minds in one body -- Mélanie shakes her head. "Too close."

Fredeline's lip curls. "Has the boy said who he's gonna be takin' as his first?"

"No," Dadou says. "He spends the most time wit' her, though that's closely followed by Legba and the Baron. Our people in San Francisco have made sure that his time under the bridle is split as best they can."

When the silence is stretched out and thin between them, the only noise the crackling of the fire and the hum of insects outside the circle, Mélanie says, "I say we bind him here, to us, where we can exert an influence on the boy. If his power is here, he'll owe us, and better that the next _poto mitan_ be beholdin' to us rather than to Alexandrine or Haiti. We can make it a condition that he refuse her as his first. With her out of the picture and his power here, where we have control," she trails off, letting the others draw their own conclusions. 

"Better here than Haiti," Variola agrees, slowly nodding. "If he plants there, his power will taint ev'ry wind coming off that island. Not many vodouisantes in this country will be affected by our winds, but everyone will by Haiti's."

"Could we ask the boy to give up a strong connection, though?" Chanté asks, clearly troubled by the prospect. "She might be on the verge of madness but to interfere with the choice of the _poto mitan_?" She stops there, shakes her head but doesn't say any more. 

Fredeline's eyes are gleaming in the light of the fire. "We ask 'im," she says. "If he be weak enough to give 'er up, then we keep 'im, here, as ours. We're the ones running hands through his power; we can unravel it and plant it any which way we want."

"You're suggesting we control the _poto mitan_," Dadou says. Fredeline nods and Dadou grimaces, says, "I can't say it sits right with me. But I think it's the best option. Freddie's got a good point: he wasn't raised to this, he doesn't know us, our people, our traditions. Until he does, _if_ he ever does, our -- let's call it supervision -- our supervision ain't a bad thing. Not at all." 

Laurette has tears running down her cheeks as she leans over and whispers to Variola.

"Laurette agrees," Variola says. "And so do I." 

Chanté nods, just once, a slow movement to match the pensive expression on her face. "I don't like it," she says, feeling her way through the words, "but I'll agree."

Marie-Celeste looks at Mélanie and asks, "It was your idea, girl. You still stand by it?" 

"I do," Mélanie says. 

Six of them have spoken and it's up to Marie-Celeste now, to complete the circle or break it anew. The old crone leans forward, breaks off a piece of aloe from the stem and then splits it, an acrid smell filling the air, clashing with the citronella and the dying fire. With a spry movement at odds with her hunched back and wrinkled face, she tosses the aloe into the fire and watches as it blackens. 

"It goes against every grain of me to agree," Marie-Celeste says. "A _poto mitan_ is a sacred thing. We ain't never interfered in the choice of a first loa before. We ain't never made conditions for our assistance before. But we also ain't never had an outsider ascend to this position. I wanna send him to Haiti and let Alexandrine deal with him. Better her than us. But my sisters agree and they make good points. If an outsider is bad 'nough, then his lack of knowledge floating on the winds would be even worse. If I don't want him disturbing the balance here, I don't want him disturbing it in Haiti even more."

"So," Variola says, "what say you, sister?" 

Marie-Celeste sighs. "We unbind his power and plant it throughout Plaquemines." 

"And the loa?" Fredeline asks, pushing.

"Garcelle asked the boy which of the loa bridled 'im," Marie-Celeste says. "And there was one name missing, a name that surprised me, 'specially with how well he and his current rider fit." 

Mélanie looks at Dadou, who's the only one of them to talk to the boy and is now frowning in thought. "Erzulie," Dadou finally says, as confusion crosses her face. "Any face of Erzulie. But. Why not?"

Marie-Celeste nods. "If his rider fits now, and they love each other, how much more d'you think he'd fit with the Dantor? La Mapienne? Even Le Flambeau?"

"Le Flambeau," Chanté murmurs. "And his mother sacrificed in a demon's fire." 

"I think if we git Erzulie on 'im, he'll be persuaded to leave the bitch behind," Marie-Celeste says. "An' if we teach him right, he'll never pick that one for his first anyway." 

Laurette leans over to Variola, who says, a moment later, "We teach him the bone law." 

Fredeline's smile, in the firelight, in the faint and struggling light of the waning moon, sends chills down Mélanie's spine. "He learn _zo regleman_, and we let 'im carry 'Zulie," she stops there, lets out a long whistle. "That'll piss off 'er so much he won't _have_ a choice but to banish her." 

"We plant him here," Marie-Celeste says. "And we use him to finish what our grandmothers' grandmothers started." 

"He loves her, though," Mélanie says, flinching when everyone turns their gazes on her. "Can we trust him to do this?" 

Marie-Celeste says, "If we teach him."

"Everyone will have plans for 'im," Dadou says. "No doubt she has some of her own. The faster we train him up, and the better, the faster he gonna figure that out for his own self. And if we help him now, the better he'll feel about doing what we want. He'll owe us." 

Marie-Celeste looks at Mélanie as she says, again, "We plant him here. We use him to finish Marinette. Agreed?" 

"Agreed," Laurette says. 

"Agreed," Chanté says. 

Mélanie, Variola, Fredeline, and Dadou all say, "Agreed," one after the other, "Agreed, agreed, agreed." 

"And I, too, agree," Marie-Celeste says. "The circle has spoken." 

The fire sputters out and dies completely, as each flowerpot cracks and the wind stills and the water bottles spring leaks. The great, concussive bass _boom_ as the circle breaks nearly tips Mélanie out of her chair.

The others start leaving but Mélanie sits there a moment longer, looks at the flowers in front of her as they wilt and turn brown in the heat. Somehow, for some reason, Mélanie doesn't think the girl will pick white lilacs for her again.


End file.
